Robert Tulip wrote:Bulgakov is saying that lack of sincerity and integrity destroy genuine artistic creativity. In a context where artists’ success depends on second-guessing the views of a narrow clique of political leaders, the admiration and reputation that come in response to genuine expression are stifled.
I heard a bit of a BBC interview with Orhan Pamuk, who is in the position of having to censor himself on Islam and its relation to modernity. He was apparently in a sort of self-exile for a while, but considers it worse to be isolated from his proper milieu than to have to watch out what he expresses.
The matter of writing for oneself or for what other people want is a very complex one. In America we have people (Stephen King is an unembarrassed example, by his own account) who write for the market - for what other people want to read. Writers who steer their writing toward "something with more zip" rather than having something to say that matters to the grand philosophical and political conversations are "judged ordinary" and that in itself can shape the way writers pursue their craft, producing "wannabe's".
No wonder the books on writing advise both going into yourself and reflecting what is in the world accurately, with no sense of how to bridge that gap. My sense is that the gap, between exploration of inner life and understanding of the world, is integral to the spiritual nature of the human condition. The selection of what to reflect accurately in the objective world is based on "meaning," but the nature of the meaningful is deeply dependent on the way we construe our inner conflicts and frustrations. Writing is being touted these days as a substitute for religion as well as for psychotherapy, and there is something to that.
Robert Tulip wrote:The whole genre of Soviet Realism suffered from this syndrome of replacing the truth with a lie.
In principle art could be done anyway. Leni Riefenstahl seems to have been mainly interested in the technical aspects of her film-making and largely ignored or even repudiated its effect of glorifying Nazism. I have had the experience myself of being asked to do an artistic project which only appealed for its difficulty, but there is a certain exhilaration from such a challenge.
Robert Tulip wrote:Harry Marks wrote: In Russian letters, the true heart seems to demand a certain unconventionality and eccentric vision. The man of letters is of a different character from the conventional family man of the benighted countryside.
Somehow this makes me think of the famous opening line from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But the ironic inversion in Bulgakov is that he looks to see the Stalinist society as unhappy due to its conformity, with happiness reserved for those who retain a spirit of individuality.
It is actually an old trope (Faust, Dostoevsky, and more) that the Devil appeals to our near-term desires, and if we aren't careful we are led to betray the long-term priorities (our soul). Bulgakov is doing a very interesting variation on this. The actions of Satan (and the Cat) have to do with launching apparent impossibilities into conventionality, conformity, and (in the new order) iron compulsion. Satan's temptations have to do with interpretation and denial of metaphysical realities, rather than with power, glory, money or sex appeal.
I'm not sure I would go so far as to conclude that the conformists are meant to be seen as unhappy, though losing themselves in materialist trivia or in vodka could be seen that way.
It seems possible to me that he is suggesting that the element of diabolical compulsion (which is not coming from His Satanic Majesty but the new, wholly materialistic world order) turns those who would normally be clear-headed and rational into people who can't credit what they have seen with their own eyes, opting for some conspiracy by masked outsiders instead. The most original thinkers have been converted into the most pedestrian of paranoid plodders.
Robert Tulip wrote: Harry Marks wrote: Ivan is a dupe… his foolishness is seen in his adherence to particular facts (which he knows to be true) but lack of understanding of their meaning.
Who do you think dupes Ivan? It could be the Party, Satan, Berlioz or just himself.
I guess I think it is meant to be his insistence on materialism that misleads him most thoroughly. Bulgakov could very well have thought this to be true of Shaw, Bertrand Russell and other determined materialists.
Robert Tulip wrote:With Ivan, his toughness and bravado in his earlier conversation with Satan are replaced by a wild-eyed sense that his own experience is so compelling to him that it must automatically be equally compelling to others as he explains it. I feel that Bulgakov is satirising a particularly cynical practice among communists, the public expression of high principle contrasted with private ruthlessness. Ivan experiences a version of communist ruthlessness taken to an absurd extreme, and his loss of innocence creates in him the false assumption that his own conversion will meet with empathy, when instead it just encounters incredulity and suspicion.
That's really interesting. It is a kind of blindness, or perhaps madness, that comes from interpreting "high principle" in terms of one's own power. An extreme case, perhaps, of the sports principle that "winners always want the ball": personal power is completely identified with whatever motivations the person thinks they are propelled by.
I'm not immediately persuaded by your interpretation of Ivan's blithe expectation of being believed, but it would fit with the blindness you pointed out.
Robert Tulip wrote:Harry Marks wrote:This is a good theme for an anti-Communist to explore, and raises important questions as to what role "the meaning of life" plays in grand political questions.
Could you clarify what you see as this theme? It seems you are asking about the ‘end justifies the means’ hypocrisy of communism.
I had in mind the contrast between facts and interpretation, and the materialist's rigid preference for "proper" interpretation despite more natural and obvious interpretations. The shallowness of not seeing deeper forces goes with the rigidity of insisting on materialism when something else is afoot.
Marx brilliantly saw the arrangement of interpretations (the "superstructure" of culture) as inevitably dominated by the class structure determined by ownership of the means of production (violence, then land, then capital - buildings and machines). When the bourgeoisie emerge as an important force, something like Calvinism will emerge to justify it, "droit de seigneur" will give way, and aristocracy will eventually be replaced by "bourgeois democracy." Cromwell (or something like him) is inevitable, and Robespierre. Note that he avoided arguing that socialism is "right" and instead substituted "inevitable." Marx had attempted to banish the spiritual force of what is right by turning instead to analysis purporting to show socialism as inevitable (we still haven't heard the last word on the decline in the return on capital, by the way.) Right and wrong are empty conventions, while material circumstances are determinative.
Thus the Marxist/Leninists turned to justifying horrible means with noble ends, a continuation of the rule of violence of the old, pre-democratic regimes, by arguing that they were the clear-eyed ones (shades of Talleyrand). They banished issues of meaning and worthiness of goals by arguing necessity instead. While I am not yet impressed by Bulgakov's choice of symbols for the hidden world of the spirit, I am willing to grant its dismissal a central role in the disaster that was communism.
Robert Tulip wrote:Harry Marks wrote: Is life just about material conditions? Or do issues like honesty and loyalty "really" matter?
These questions go to the heart of the relation between politics and economics. The implicit question is whether it is possible for a society to improve material conditions in ways that are dishonest and disloyal. Clearly it is possible in the short term, but I think the Soviet example is the signal lesson that absence of principle produces unsustainable systems.
I don't think there is any question that material improvements can happen by means that fatally compromise honesty and virtue. Zinn's book is an extended proof. What did the American promises and treaties with the First Peoples mean? Something between diddly and squat. Honesty? Don't make me laugh.
Robert Tulip wrote:The Psalmist summarised it with the line that without vision the people perish (Prov 29:18). When a society collapses into mutual universal suspicion and mistrust, it cannot really function, since we need to assume basic conditions such as that people will keep promises and honour contracts. Communists saw tactical advantage in abrogating bourgeois values, but this destruction of civil society and the market economy imagined a role for the state that it could never fulfil. Traditional ideals of honour, nobility, integrity, honesty and loyalty are moral principles that are essential for social functioning.
If you were to put it as baldly as a claim that five-year plans and a much higher rate of economic growth could justify the discrediting of honour, integrity and loyalty, I would say that is the question at the heart of the experiment. A similar experiment took place in China, with the one-child policy. The party was not too concerned with how the persuasion took place, and much barbarity ensued. Yet the gains in standard of living, and thus in material well-being, were enormous (and still continuing). After the creation of a scientific method and the acquisition by farming Europe of hunter-gatherer North America, it was probably the single most materially elevating development in modern history.
Was it worth it? Given the dominance in human decision-making of urgent material need over longer-run spiritual priorities, I would tend to say yes. The former choice of larger families was neither noble nor visionary. But the enormous cost of the policy should never be forgotten, and the people who were imposed upon should have a certain shame at not choosing the right road for themselves, without state control.
But you raise a more narrowly focused question: suspicion and mistrust. Leaving aside the crimes which actually do have a material justification for society, the question of whether a society needs to have a sense of honour in order to rely on each other is also important. And I think Bulgakov may be suggesting that the bargain with the devil which was the embracing of materialism may have ripped apart mutual loyalty. As we await some understanding of the shooting in Las Vegas, I am inclined to wonder whether the same thing is happening in the West.
Robert Tulip wrote: This term ‘liquidate’ has always filled me with horror, with its image of human beings turned to liquid.
Well, it may have no more behind it than the liquidation of corporations, in which their physical assets are sold for liquidity, quite literally.
Robert Tulip wrote:So when mad Ivan calls the apoetchik a kulak pretending to be a communist, he satirises the bitter tension of Soviet society, how kulak values of thrift and honour and dignity must be suppressed in favour of the bloodthirsty communist cult of equality.
Yes, I think that is a central image, and one that I am happy you underlined. I read right past it, myself. The middle class has always been dismissed as a bunch of "strivers" and so they (we) are. Yet all the more reason why they (we) need a code of honour.
Robert Tulip wrote: Harry Marks wrote:
Small property is clearly protection from others. Big property is more: it makes the owner into a leader and decider, a ruler of a sort. It is simply a fallacy to say one cannot restrict the freedom of big property without eliminating the protection of small property.
This reminds me of an earlier comment you made Harry about the nature of capitalism. The US dealt with this problem quite effectively in earlier times, as I understand it, through Trust Busting. What I really like about Hayek’s book The Constitution of Liberty is his emphasis on rule of law, the idea that an unregulated market is suboptimal, and that capitalism can only work with strong state regulation of the economy, extending beyond property ownership to also include standards.
I haven't read "Constitution of Liberty" but probably should. I think trust busting was necessary but not sufficient. It took a constitutional amendment to introduce an income tax, due to the dominance of the courts by the propertied class. It took the near revolutionary desperation of the Great Depression to raise the graduated rates significantly and make taxation on high incomes substantial. And now we are living with Citizens United, in which the Supreme Court bizarrely threw out limitations on the support that corporations and the rich (including foreigners!) could extend to political candidates, thus turning the Republican party into something straight out of Bulgakov. Apparatchiks every one.
Robert Tulip wrote:Harry Marks wrote: Small, voluntary common property can be marvelous. Big, enforced common property seemingly must be horrible.
My view is that a sharing economy can only function in a context of high trust and high abundance, meaning that left wing values of equality can only be achieved in practice when they build upon right wing values of freedom. Monastic communes form an exception through the intense focus on ideology including the poverty vow, but the high levels of education and voluntarism required for such monkish institutions means they are risky and invalid models for broader social organisation.
Robert Tulip wrote:Harry Marks wrote:I think we are on to a pattern, here.
What do you mean?
I meant to reference the comparison between the benevolence of small property and the benevolence of small communism, by contrast with the abuses which tend to arise with big business with big communism. I appreciate your foray into analysis of the conditions at work. I am turning the idea over for a possible essay, and I think you have identified important issues.
Robert Tulip wrote:I had not heard of Roy Moore, and discovered that he has a very long and entertaining Wikipedia entry. My view is that his use of the Ten Commandments was a straightup code for racial, class and sexual prejudice, since Moses defined a person as a man who owns property.
Since I know this sort of person in real life, I would say only to an extent. It is a code for religion, which in the South means "respectability." The alternative is the Sportin' Life (although if you are white you can move back and forth across the boundary, with or without dramatic displays of remorse.)
The Ten Commandments are a code for "doin' like you was raised to do." This may include lynching blacks (though rarely these days, and the real nutjobs go in more for militias and church burnings) and brewing moonshine in the hills, but it most certainly includes a "code of trust and loyalty" among the ordinary white folks. No rape, or even insulting women, speaking respectfully to your elders, sticking to your word, taking responsibility for your own ups and downs, and no shacking up or cheating on your spouse.
These people honestly believe that taking prayer out of schools was a turn down the road to perdition, and burning the flag is the equivalent of calling a man a lying no-good cheat to his face. (Expect trouble, because you asked for it.) Many are heavily invested in evangelical Protestant religion and believe in the Rapture, Hell and seven-day Creation as necessary badges of respectability.
Robert Tulip wrote:What I was getting at was that social polarisation has reached a highly deranged level.
Maybe, but what you don't seem to get is that 45 actually is deranged. By that I mean he is disconnected from any reality of moral principles, most especially including any obligation to actually tell the truth, and he has a moderate case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (which normally implies moral incapacity). His divisiveness has been elevated to power by the desperation of people who are heavily invested in social division. They are not actually deranged, in my view. They are like Roy Moore - locked into a combative but fundamentally innocent view of the way the world works.
Robert Tulip wrote: Art requires individual freedom of conscience, to listen to the voice of the spirit.
Very true, very quotable.